Browsing: Afghanistan

A parent presiding over a child’s promotion ceremony is rare enough. Being able to arrange such an event in a war zone is verging on the impractical, but can happen. But organizing such a promotion, then following it up inside a year with the child promoting the parent? That makes you the leader in the family-friendly clubhouse, and that’s where you’ll find the Moon men, thanks to a May 15 ceremony in Aberdeen, North Carolina. There, 1st Lt. Steven B. Moon pinned O-6 insignia onto Col. Steven R. Moon, a reservist serving on…

A veteran of the war in Afghanistan has been told he should suffer for his service. Retired Army Capt. Matt Zeller says he fought for Americans to freely express themselves, but what he saw on his windshield crossed the line. Zeller was out grocery shopping in Virginia Sunday when he returned to find the following note on his car: “You should be ashamed of yourself. You are a murdered if you ‘served’ in Afghanistan. I hope you watch your child starve and die in front of you, as you have done to the people of Afghanistan.” “I have a young…

The story of the first cultural support team member to be killed in Afghanistan will be brought to the silver screen with the help of an Academy Award-winning actress, Deadline.com reported earlier this week. Fox 2000 teamed with Reese Witherspoon’s Pacific Standard production company to secure film rights for the upcoming book “Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield,” according to the entertainment-news website. The title references 1st Lt. Ashley White, who was killed in a roadside bomb blast in Kandahar province’s Zhari district on Oct. 22, 2011. White was part of…

Gary Faulkner, a Colorado man with no combat training or independent wealth, made at least 11 attempts to find and capture Osama bin Laden — some ending in Pakistan, one ending in Las Vegas, none conducted under the auspices of any government or military agency. How does a nation honor such actions? A medal? Prison time? A movie starring Nicolas Cage with a title lifted from an old recruiting commercial? Turns out, it’s the third thing. Cage will portray a character based on Faulkner in “Army of One,” The Hollywood Reporter reported Wednesday. Larry Charles, the director behind “Borat,” “Bruno” and “The Dictator,” will…

Deployments can stop Army parents from attending a child’s rites of passage, everything from birthdays to graduations to recitals to touchdowns. Such milestones are the kinds of things that can’t tag along into a war zone. Well, most of them can’t. Master Sgt. Ronald Hoover was in Afghanistan when his daughter, Jessica Boughan, was slated for promotion to sergeant first class. Not only did the 26-year veteran get to see it, he got to do it — the ceremony took place Sunday at Bagram Airfield. “This is the first big event that he has actually been able to be at so it’s pretty great,” Boughan…

First, watch the video. Then, get a good excuse ready in case somebody sees you starting to tear up. After that, some back story: http://vimeo.com/99466249 The video of Sgt. Joey and Michelle Johnson dancing at their wedding has been online since their summer nuptials, but it gained serious traction recently thanks to an ABC News report about the couple published on Veterans Day. The groom met his future bride at a country music concert in 2012, a few weeks after returning from a 10-month deployment to Afghanistan, ABC News reported. He injured his spine in a motorcycle wreck in August of that year, Michelle Johnson…

When retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry pinned the Bronze Star on retired Army Maj. Eric Phillips, it provided resolution to a long saga that began in Afghanistan in 2005. Phillips had waited years to tell Eikenberry his story, and he finally got the opportunity on Sept. 8 when both attended the screening of the National Geographic documentary “American War Generals.” In July 2005, Phillips was serving as commander of a convoy enroute from Kabul to Gardez when they ran into an ambush, he said. With his troops bogged down and taking fire, Phillips called in for air support. As…

The superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy wanted the school’s new head football coach to get a first-person understanding of the jobs his players — current Black Knights and future recruits — will be doing after they hang up the pads. So Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, himself a starting offensive lineman while at West Point in the 1970s, brought Jeff Monken along on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan last month, with the three-star speaking with recent academy grads as well as more senior leaders to find out how to improve the school in ways that will help future students succeed…

After more than 100 tense minutes, German troops in Kabul hit the roof when their team scored the winning goal in Sunday’s World Cup game against Argentina. “The reaction from the troops was unbelievable,” said Col. Achim Ruetzel, chief of the Civil Aviation Transition Branch. “Everyone was jumping around with his arms in the air and everybody was – almost kissing each other, I would say.” A few U.S. troops were also watching the game at the German troops’ invitation, Ruetzel told Outside the Wire on Tuesday. “Obviously, they were all cheering for the German team, not for Argentina,” he…

The Hollywood forces behind “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” could tell Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s story on the big screen, according to a report from a well-known industry news site. Deadline.com said earlier this week that Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal are “in the early planning stage” of a project on the recently returned prisoner of war. Bigelow became the first woman to win the Oscar for best director with “The Hurt Locker” in 2008, and she and Boal both produced that movie as well as “Zero Dark Thirty,” a version of the Osama bin Laden raid that benefited…